The Penny Sheets: Cacopheny's Musebox

The press meeting takes way too long. Then they're all taken to a hospital, because most of them are injured in some way. Then Mel takes them back to that stupid tower. Avengers Tower. Watchtower. New Avengers Tower. Nobody knows what they're calling it.

They get a tour, even though they're exhausted and grouchy, and even though half the tower is clearly in some state of construction and clearly not ready to be shown off. The labs are complete, hastily so, but none of them are going to be going anywhere near those. The rooftop bar is still in shambles, and none of them want to linger there. The kitchen and restaurant-like eating areas spiraled out around it seem intact, and well-stocked, at least.

They each have their own floor. Stark had originally made a whole floor for each of his superhero buddies, which hadn't really been renovated at all even in the multiple years the Avengers had been toast, so now they're the cleanest and least disturbed of the whole tower.

Bucky gets Steve's, Walker gets Thor's, Ava gets Clint's.

Yelena gets the one meant for Natasha. Of course.

And Bob gets Banner's, with its combination of calming decor and Hulk-proof walls.

Then they're left alone to "rest" with the promise that Mel and Valentina will be in touch over the next few days, which sounds more like a threat than anything else.

It is an accident. A fluke. A freak twist of fate.

The ship they're on gets caught in a storm, blown far off course. The clan can't find them quickly enough. The spells start to erode.

They do as they are programmed to do when the spells start to erode: they slaughter everyone on board in an attempt to get them to turn around. The last one they kill, a young wild mage, in desperation, throws something at them both that leaves them dazed and orderless, surrounded by bodies and one bleeding wild mage who likely won't last very long either.

One is the oldest of the Pieces of Eight the clan sends out on missions of murder. He knows that. He also knows that he loves the other pieces, whether they feel the same about him or not. He knows they're his family, even when he can't remember how they came to join him with the clan. And he knows that he is made for killing.

And now he's staring around him at the deck of the ship, bloody knives in his hands, realizing that that's pretty much all he knows.

"Seven?" he asks uncertainly. He doesn't know if she has another name. He doesn't, just his number, just One. Maybe she doesn't, either.

He wonders suddenly if he knows how to sail a ship.

Bucky never thought the (second) apocalypse would become routine. And it hasn't, not really. Everything is still pretty terrible. The uncorrupted population of the Earth is, as far as they can guess, somewhere in the hundreds of thousands, and at least half of that is centered in Wakanda. The fog has only thinned in a few areas, mostly through the efforts of Kamar Taj's small army of sorcerers, and actual safe locations are few and far between. Food is often hard to come by, as planting crops is difficult when the fog might damage them at any time and hunting the fog-warped monsters requires careful cooking or cleansing spells from said sorcerers for the meat to be edible by normal humans. Unmarred animals have been rare enough that they haven't managed to breed anything but chickens, so the only food they have every day is eggs. The small groups of eldritch raiders that roam the planet aren't edible at all, not even if you're a supersoldier. Bucky would probably kill someone for a loaf of bread.

But being sent out to check on anomalous magical fluctuations, and subsequently shooting whatever comes out of them, is pretty normal now. Bucky and Peggy are the only ones on this particular mission: Banner is in the middle of a project and can't be disturbed, and Scott and Hope are on a different trek checking out something to the south. Bucky prefers to be sent out with Peggy, anyhow. They work well together, both on and off the battlefield. He might even privately admit she's managed to partly fill the hole in his heart left after bisecting Steve's zombified corpse. It will always be there, but it's more bearable these days.

They left the city a couple hours ago, on foot as this didn't wasn't far enough out to waste fuel on the jet or armored truck, and are nearing the coordinates Wong gave them, somewhere in upstate New York. There's only been a couple dog-sized bundles of tentacles to shoot, and it's mostly woodland. Probably formerly cultivated woodland rather than something truly wild, but it's wild now, with the planes of the trees reaching as much horizontally as vertically.

"Think it'll be another raiding party?" Bucky asks quietly, rifle up as they approach what used to be a lakeshore, though the lake itself appears to have mostly dried up as part of it broke open into a shimmering sinkhole.

The realms of faerie love their frivolity. Great gatherings with music and food and dancing and chatter. Soldier doesn't know which great fae lord this is; it isn't like it matters. He's not here to kill any of them. He's here to prevent anything from happening to his own master, so he keeps his attention on him, as is only appropriate.

Though he does find his gaze drifting from his master to the swirl of movement and color from the ballroom floor, from time to time. There are flashes of leaves and talons and raven wings among the dancers, in cloths and hair and eyes, but the rhythm is engaging, the melody is pleasant, and he knows the steps. His feet itch to move, even though he knows he could probably never keep up with the true faerie dancers, and might lose what little he has left of himself if he tries. He still kind of wants to.

He knows he mustn't ask. But apparently his master can tell what he wants, because he finds the cool eyes on him when his gaze wanders back where it belongs. He straightens up, guilty and afraid, but the old fae just smiles indulgently.

"Go on, pet," he says. "I am safe enough for now."

Soldier goes. He doesn't have the same grace as most of the people on that dance floor, as heavy as he is with the metal growing out of his bones, but he has some value as a dancer still. He spins the real fae around to the beat as it picks up in response to the newcomer, strange steps from another life that they manage to pick up with laughter and chattering amongst themselves-- not for him, never for him, but still pleasant to have around him-- and feels almost happy enough to smile. It won't last, it never lasts, and he might come away from the dance with new fangs hooked into his mind, but he doesn't care. He wants to dance.

Continued from here.

The Admiral drops them off... inside a quinjet. An empty, parked quinjet, with trees outside the windshield. B looks around with a frown, duffel bag of his meager things over one shoulder and hair mostly pulled back. Some bits escape, not quite long enough to stay in the tail.

"I thought we'd wind up in Wakanda," he admits. "Is this where you left from?"

Finding a helicopter hadn't been hard. It was getting to it that had been hard. And then getting it started. And then staring for an hour as he flew out across the ocean (hoping he had enough fuel to get to land again) at the bite on his arm and waiting to change (hoping he crashed in the ocean).

And stubbornly not changing. For another hour. And another hour. Still flying, still feeling like himself, still feeling absolutely no hankering for tasty brains. Either his serum is different enough from Steve's to keep the infection at bay (which hurts to think), there's something about being fried directly in the brain every few days that makes a brain-attacking virus unable to work (which has its own implications), or maybe zombies don't realize they feel a hankering for tasty brains until they run into someone with one?

He doesn't crash in the ocean. He does continue to fly through the morning, heading back to Wakanda. Back home, in a way. Helicopters are much slower than quinjets. Maybe Peter and T'Challa are already there, already setting up their tech. Ayo will be there, guarding their backs. Maybe they've already done it, and that's why he feels just fine. Maybe the world is safe now.

Every now and then he tries a radio frequency, the one he and the other survivors used to use. "Barnes incoming. Anyone listening. Over."

For about a second, Bucky is sure he had an actual, honest-to-god heart attack at the sight of Steve flailing his way across a twenty-foot gap full of fire and exploding things, but then somehow, impossibly, there's a hand clinging to the railing in front of him, and he's got both of his hands around it, and he's hauling Steve over the rail and they're collapsing in a heap.

He's swearing and can't manage to stop, voice too high and too fast. "Oh my god oh fuck Jesus Mary and Joseph oh fuck Steve," he babbles, shoving at the body half-across his chest. Steve is heavy. (So heavy he's not even sure how he managed to get him over the rail.)

There's still heat and smoke everywhere, but he's going to take a minute to freak out on the metal floor for a second.

He's found an old house at the edge of some small town in some part of northeastern America, he's already forgotten the town's name because he doesn't want to know the town's name. He's holed up in one of the second-story bedrooms, behind a door blocked by a rotting dresser, with a backpack of supplies and a couple guns and maybe for a little while, he can rest. No cameras caught him on his way here-- most of his way here was through the goddamn woods-- and none of the neighbors saw him climb in the back window.

So he's curled up in a corner, and trying to take a moment to breathe. One gun is in his metal hand, more like a security blanket than a weapon, and he has the flesh one under his head. Maybe he can sleep a little. Maybe.

It had taken her a while to get far enough into the ranks of this... organization. They have half a dozen names for themselves, depending on where one gains entrance, and most people don't ever go beyond those half-dozen entrance groups. Natasha is good, but these people are paranoid, and death cults are not a thing that you get access to immediately.

But because she is good, here she is finally, fresh from the ritual bath and dressed in undyed cotton, barefoot, ready for her first ritual. She's the only new one today, but there are other junior members walking in their two lines from the baths to the ritual room and its five sealed coffins. Natasha has yet to be told what's in them, only that they are very powerful.

"Which one is it today?" the young man who'd introduced himself as Stolen Moon (junior members tend to pick very pretentious ritual names) asks, quietly, of the senior member walking in front of him, who was known by the (slightly less pretentious) name Fox.

"You'll see when we get there," Fox says.

"Don't ask questions in front of the initiate," adds the senior at the head of the second column, an older woman called Hawk.

There are already three senior members waiting inside: Raven, Star, and Shimmer. Fox and Hawk motion for everyone to take their places, in an outward-facing ring inside the circle of coffins, and then join them, each standing between two of the coffins.